The Romance of the Black River
The Story of the C.M.S. Nigeria Mission

By F. Deaville Walker

London: Church Missionary Society, 1930.

Chapter XIV. Reorganization and Progress

THE death of Bishop Crowther marks the close of an epoch in
the C.M.S. Mission in Nigeria. We have referred to the saintly
character and apostolic zeal of the great and good bishop; but
the very kindliness of his nature led to some slackness in his
administration of discipline. After his death the question arose
as to whether the best interests of the work would not be served
by the appointment of a European bishop to succeed him. The matter
called for most careful inquiry. Moreover, at that time the Mission
was worked in two separate sections, viz., the Niger, Crowther's
diocese, and the Yoruba-Lagos section that had all along been
under the Bishop of Sierra Leone. The time seemed to have come
to unite the two in one new diocese, to be called (at the suggestion
of Archbishop Benson) Western Equatorial Africa. [The fact that
Freetown is 1500 miles from Lagos had made it impossible for
the Bishops of Sierra Leone to exercise full control of the Yoruba-Lagos
Mission. The best they could do was a very occasional visit--sometimes
at intervals of several years. They were virtually absentee bishops.]
The selection of a bishop with the personal and spiritual qualifications
for this great diocese gave the C.M.S. Committee no little anxiety
before the finger of God seemed to point to the right man, Joseph
Sidney Hill.

As a young man, Hill had done a short term in Lagos, but had
been invalided home. In 1891 he offered to go to Nigeria again,
remarking that his health was now sound and he was "as hard
as nails." Circumstances pointed to him as the most suitable
man for the bishopric. He was a born leader, vigorous, tactful,
and resourceful, just the man to lead the African churches to
new victories for Christ. At the Archbishop's suggestion, he
was sent out first for a six months' tour that he might make
a firsthand study of the problems before him. This plan was carried
out successfully. His genial disposition and practical common
sense won esteem and affection on all hands. Realizing the importance
of associating Africans with himself in the leadership of the
Mission, Hill laid his plans on wise, broad lines, choosing two
experienced African clergymen, Isaac Oluwole and Charles Phillips,
to be assistant bishops of his huge diocese. When he returned
to England he brought them with him and presented them to the
Archbishop for consecration. All three were consecrated together
in St. Paul's Cathedral on June 29, 1893. The experiment of the
co-operation of English and African bishops has proved a great
success, and the solution proposed by Bishop Hill has continued
until the present time.

In November, amid great expectations and prayers, Bishop Hill
sailed for Africa, accompanied by Mrs. Hill and a dozen new missionaries,
five men and seven women. They reached Lagos in mid-December.
Three weeks later there came the startling cable: "Bishop
Hill and Mrs. Hill at rest." They had died in Lagos on January
5 (1894) within a few hours of one another. Then, before the
Society at home had recovered from this terrible blow, and was
still without details of the bishop's death, other cables came
with tragic swiftness announcing the death of one after another
of the missionaries: on January 17 the Rev. E. W. Mathias, on
the 2oth the Rev. J. Vernall, on the 21st the Rev. A. E. Sealey,
and on the 23rd Miss Mansbridge. It was overwhelming.

In sorrow and bewilderment the Committee waited for letters
with full details of the disaster that had shattered'hopes and
plans, waited too, with almost speechless anxiety for more cables,
which happily did not come. The angel of death had passed
on. The whole Mission, indeed the Society itself, was stricken.
For seventy years the C.M.S. had known nothing like it. In due
course the mails brought the sad story. Bishop Hill had died
in the afternoon, and his wife, herself too ill to be told of
her loss, just after midnight; and then, as one after another
was stricken down by the unseen enemy, their colleagues nursed
and watched over them with loving care, not knowing who might
be the next victim. Those were terrible hours, days, weeks for
the little band of missionaries in Nigeria. At the time men talked
about malaria, and dysentery, and blackwater; it was years before
scientific investigations discovered that the real enemy was
yellow fever, a pestilence the very existence of which had never
been suspected in Lagos.

The unexpected death of Bishop Hill created a very difficult
situation. For two years the Niger had been without episcopal
oversight. The death of so many missionaries and the retirement
of others had disorganized everything, and it was felt that a
new bishop must be appointed immediately. In the emergency, the
Committee nominated the Rev. Herbert Tugwell, who, four years
before, had gone out from Cambridge to Lagos and thus added to
his other high qualifications a thorough knowledge of the field.
With the full approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury he was
summoned to England, and on Sunday, March 4, just two months
after the death of Bishop Hill, he was consecrated in the historic
chapel of Lambeth Palace. Five days later, at a great meeting
in Exeter Hall to bid him Godspeed, Bishop Bardsley, of Carlisle,
used a very memorable sentence. He said: "Some of you may
ask, 'Might not the men who have given their lives for Africa
have done longer and more useful service in our home parishes?
Wherefore this waste? 'Brethren, let us not take up words
from the mouth of Judas Iscariot."

In a few weeks Bishop Tugwell was back in Africa, and at once
shouldered the burdens of his new office, arranging matters in
Lagos and the Yoruba Country and then visiting the stations of
the delta and up the Niger. Naturally, after the experiences
of those terrible January weeks, many were anxious for him; but
he was already acclimatized and soon proved himself the man for
the post. A new era had dawned for the Mission that had known
so many setbacks.

Long before Bishop Tugwell took charge, the troubles in the
Yoruba Country had ended. It would be idle to pretend that the
work had not suffered as a result of the events that disturbed
the Mission between 1867 and 1880 (narrated in chapter X); but
the churches were not overthrown. Indeed, when thrown back upon
their own resources they had learned to fend for themselves.
The African workers had done nobly, particularly the Rev. James
Johnson, who, from a Lagos pastorate, had been sent to take charge
of the whole Yoruba Mission. [At a later stage (1900) the Rev.
James Johnson became assistant bishop, with the oversight of
the work in the delta.] It was not an easy task; it called for
tact, and firmness, and patience, as well as courage, to keep
the churches together and steer them through troubled seas of
heathen bitterness and anti-English prejudice. He made great
efforts to lead the churches to do more by way of self-support,
and this pressure was misunderstood and resented by some of his
flock. In 1880 it was found possible for European missionaries
to return to the interior after an enforced absence of thirteen
years.

At first it was not easy to rekindle in England an interest
in the Yoruba Country. A new generation had arisen that had forgotten
the romantic days of Abeokuta and Ibadan, and knew not Townsend,
Gollmer, and Hinderer. But in time interest began to revive and
volunteers came forward. New stations were opened, and ere long
the time came for unmarried women missionaries to be sent up-country
as well as men. One very great change had taken place: the fear
of Dahomian invasion had passed for ever, for as one result of
the "scramble for Africa" the strong hand of France
had been laid upon that once-dreaded kingdom; in 1892 the Dahomian
king went into exile, the army was disbanded, and peace came
where hitherto it had been almost unknown.

The settlement of Bishop Oluwole in Lagos, with charge also
of the Abeokuta and Ijebu districts, and of Bishop Phillips at
Ode Ondo, in the interior, to take charge of the northern part
of the Yoruba section, set Bishop Tugwell himself free to travel
widely and give attention to the Niger Mission with its many
problems.

The first of these to receive attention was the delta section,
where, under Archdeacon Crowther the churches of Bonny and Brass,
with their surrounding out-stations had reached a stage at which
they felt able to shoulder their own burdens, both financial
and administrative. They had very deeply resented the drastic
policy of four years before, and while not breaking away from
the Church of England, they had severed themselves from the direct
control of the C.M.S. and had formed themselves into a semi-independent
"Delta Pastorate." While loyally recognizing the bishop
as their "overseer," these churches desired a large
measure of self-government, and to this difficult problem Bishop
Tugwell applied himself. In drawing up a constitution for the
Pastorate many perplexing and delicate questions necessarily
emerged: personal feeling and national sentiment complicated
the issues. But with rare tact and patience the bishop, assisted
by Bishop Phillips, Archdeacon Crowther, H. H. Dobinson, and
others, settled down to the task, and after nine weeks completed
a proposed constitution, acceptable to all parties on the spot,
and forwarded it to England for approval by the C.M.S. Committee
and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It was a notable accomplishment for the bishop's first year
of office, and it greatly relieved what had for some time been
a very difficult situation. "We must in future pursue a
line of more trust in God and more trust in the Africans,"
wrote H. H. Dobinson, who for several years had gone through
the thick of the troubles; "overmuch caution is as bad as
rashness, and we seem to me to want a more trusting and generous
policy towards the native African churches." In that spirit
the new scheme for the Delta Pastorate was carried through. The
bishop was greatly pleased with much that he saw of the work
in that area, "a great and successful work, the like of
which we have nothing on the Niger proper," wrote Dobinson.
They found Sunday congregations at Bonny varying from 1600 to
900. "Thanks be to God!" wrote Dobinson during his
stay there with the bishop; "Bonny was a very difficult
place to begin with, owing to bitter opposition and severe persecution.
Now almost all love the Church." And he added:--

Before Bishop Tugwell and I preached on Sunday last we were
told that what we said would be repeated in six or seven different
chapels far inland, and in the Ibo markets. Bonny people are
remarkable for travelling and teaching. At places sixty, seventy,
and eighty miles distant, where they go to buy palm oil for trade,
they build for themselves rough prayer-houses and chapels and
assemble themselves and others on Sundays. Two or three teachers
will repeat word for word sermons they have heard in Bonny.

It soon became evident that the troubles on the Niger were
slowly being overcome; unworthy members had been disciplined
or expelled from the churches, unsatisfactory workers had been
replaced, while, on the other hand, a few of the more worthy
of those who had been so hastily dismissed were restored. A period
of rebuilding had dawned. Best of all, Dobinson and Bishop Tugwell,
by their never-failing tact, patience and goodwill, had won back
the confidence of the churches. Racial feelings which had been
aroused began to die down, and by degrees a friendly and helpful
co-operation between the European missionaries and their African
fellow workers greatly strengthened the Mission. Dobinson, who
for half-a-dozen years had done splendid work at Onitsha, was
made archdeacon, but within a year he died. In the Yoruba Country,
a training institution, known as St. Andrew's College, was opened
at Oyo, for the training of teachers, catechists, and clergy.
The Abeokuta mission celebrated its jubilee; new churches were
built there and at Ibadan and other places, and a mission was
planted in the Ijebu Country. The whole Mission was better staffed
and under closer supervision than had been possible before. New
life, pulsating through the diocese, soon discovered new outlets,
and a new era of expansion began.

Meanwhile, the Royal Niger Company was steadily introducing
a new order of things throughout its chartered territories. With
a firm hand it was seeking to bring to an end the evils of intertribal
war and slave raiding and to induce the chiefs, small and great,
to rule on more humanitarian principles than aforetime. No doubt
there were blunders, but slowly order grew out of chaos. Not
unnaturally, there were from time to time local troubles. Tribes
did not understand the new conditions, and chiefs, sensitive
as to their rights, were not at ease under the rule of the Company;
some of them resented what they regarded as interference with
their affairs. Occasionally a punitive expedition or a little
war had to be organized against some gross offender, as, for
example, when (in 1895) the people of several delta towns united
in an attack upon Akassa, a trading port at the mouth of the
Nun: the Europeans escaped by the timely arrival of a mail steamer,
but there was a merciless massacre of Kroo boys and African clerks,
some of whose bodies were carried back to the bush and eaten.
Two years later the members of a government mission to Benin
were ambushed and killed. In each case a force was sent to punish
the outrage.

Of much greater importance was the expedition against Bida
on the Upper Niger. For many years it had been the head-quarters
of notorious slave-raiding emirs who carried out big raids on
both sides of the river. At last Sir George Goldie's patience
was exhausted, and he resolved to crush the men who for the sake
of slaves kept the country in a state of fear and unrest. Most
people agreed that this drastic step was necessary for the safety
and wellbeing of oppressed tribes under the protection of the
Company. It was a short, sharp campaign; within a month Bida
was captured (January, 1897), and its ferocious Fulani rulers
driven away. The power of slavery was broken in the Nupé
Country, and on the Diamond Jubilee Day of Queen Victoria a decree
was promulgated from the Company's head-quarters abolishing slavery
throughout the Niger Territories.

Bishop Tugwell was eager to seize the new opportunity. He
had himself visited Bida two years before its capture by the
Company's forces, and almost immediately after its fall issued
an appeal for missionaries to occupy it in the name of Christ.
Since Crowther and Dr. Baikie visited it (just forty years before)
it had grown into a great city with a population estimated at
50,000. It appeared to be a strategic centre for missionary activity.
But the capture of the city was not followed up by British occupation;
the Company's troops were withdrawn, the Fula emir returned,
and for the moment it was deemed unsafe to station a missionary
there.

But though Bishop Tugwell was prepared to wait his opportunity,
he had no thought of dropping the project. Meanwhile, his thoughts
turned further east to the Basa Country lying north of the Benué
River. In 1896 he had journeyed as far inland as Keffi and in
the following year stationed his first missionaries among the
Basa people. It was the first organized work north of the rivers.

A still larger project was shaping itself in Bishop Tugwell's
active mind, nothing less than the fulfilment of the mission
to the Central Sudan for which Brooke and Robinson nad laid down
their lives. But that is a separate story and demands a separate
chapter.